An implant revision surgery is a process by which an existing implant is removed to be replaced by a new implant. However, due to the bond between the implant to be removed and the bone, the bone is often damaged during implant removal. As a result, the subsequent positioning and installation of a replacement implant may lack precision due to damaged bone surfaces. For instance, in knee revision surgery, machining of the bone surfaces using conventional cutting blocks may lack precision as conventional bone landmarks used for defining the orientation of the cutting block may be altered or removed during the removal of the implant.
Patient specific instrumentation (hereinafter “PSI”) pertains to the creation of instruments that are made specifically for the patient. PSI are typically manufactured from data using imaging to model bone geometry. Therefore, PSI have surfaces that may contact the bone in a predictable way as such contact surfaces are specifically manufactured to match the surface of a bone of a given patient. It would therefore be desirable to use PSI technology in an implant revision process.